Due to the low intake of candidates in science subjects, unaided self financed B.Ed colleges (Private colleges) of Jharkhand are facing acute financial crunch. As many as 82 such colleges have decided to shutdown their colleges voluntarily from the next session because of this crisis.
According to the existing provisions (Notification number 1382 of 2004) of State Human Resources Development (HRD) department, B.Ed colleges are to admit 10 students each in History, Geography, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics, English and Hindi, five students each in Civics and Economics, three in Commerce, two in Home Science, Sanskrit, Regional languages and one in Urdu.
“The subject wise admission is the biggest constraint for us since we are unable to get students of Science and language categories. In the ongoing session out of 880 science subject seats covering all the private colleges here, only 123 students were admitted,” said Jharkhand Teacher’s Training College Association’s Treasurer (JTTCA) Manish Tiwari on Monday.
Adding more on this issue, JTTCA Secretary Satish Kumar Sinha said, “National Council of Teacher’s Education (NCTE) does not stipulate subject wise admission but HRD’s notification divides the admission on subject categories. For past one year, we have been requesting the HRD to bring flexibility in this notification so that our finance can be managed. But, no action has been taken.”
Under the prevailing circumstances, the private colleges are unable to run their colleges. They are duty bound to pay state government prescribed salaries to their teachers and non-teaching staffs, but the shortage of candidates is forcing them to rethink on whether they can run their colleges or not.
In this regard, JTTCA had filed a case in High Court. “If HRD helps us then we will certainly withdraw the case else we have decided to shutdown our colleges from the next session (2014-15),” Manish added.
Manish also informed that aspiring teaching profession candidates of Jharkhand usually prefer Arts and Commerce subjects at B.Ed level. He said, “The limited few seats in these subjects compel them to take admission in colleges outside the state.”